


I Blame Hemingway

by gluecklich



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-21
Updated: 2015-02-21
Packaged: 2018-03-14 11:11:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3408398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gluecklich/pseuds/gluecklich
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney was laughing, John’s house was on fire, and Rodney was laughing. </p>
<p>A small collection of McKay/Sheppard ficlets and drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. They'll Say You Were Never Here

**Author's Note:**

> These were originally posted on LiveJournal in 2007 under the name paw_tracks/paperbinned. I've gone back over them briefly to find and fix stray typos, but they're mostly unchanged.

“Fire! There is a fire, somewhere, I don’t know. It’s— I can smell it! We are going to burn to death! You—You aren’t even listening to me.” 

John groaned, twisting away from the vicinity of Rodney’s voice and burrowing deeper into his pillow. “Oh, great. Fantastic! Just lay there and burn to death, because I am so not hauling your skinny ass down the stairs and pulling something vital that will most likely end in me being paralyzed and the two of us dying horrible, grotesque deaths.”

John made a quiet sound low in his throat. Something he was sure meant, ‘ _Fine. Fire is cool_ ,’ but might have meant ‘ _Please, save me_ ,’ because Rodney was suddenly on top of him, pulling at his t-shirt hard enough to rip the seams.

“Rodney.” He sounded indignant, swatting blindly as Rodney made a grab for his arm.

“Listen Colonel, you might be willing to be incinerated, but I’d be the one who’d have to explain to Elizabeth why you couldn’t get your ‘I’m too cool for proper bathroom towels and floss’ body outside in time--” 

_Floss?_ John flossed. 

“--not to mention that once the female population of Atlantis found out you were prematurely cremated they’d probably take their own lives in some ritualistic fashion, hugging pieces of your clothing to their dead bodies or diving into trees.”

_Diving into trees?_ “What?” 

Rodney was still pulling, giving up on John’s clothing and moving downwards to his waist. He was actually trying to lift John off the bed. “Rodney. Rodney, _stop_. There’s nothing on fire.”

“What?” Rodney seemed so shocked by this assessment that he actually let go of John’s body. “Are you suffering from anosmia? There is a distinct smell of smoke, as in ‘hey, your house is burning, _I bet it’s on fire!_ ’” 

John propped himself up on his elbows, glancing over his shoulder to see Rodney half-poised to make another grab. He might have been half-asleep, but he was pretty sure he would smell it if the house was indeed about to suffer a quick, flame induced end. Besides, the fire alarm wasn’t even going off, and John knew he’d put batteries in that thing, it’d beeped at him for weeks, willing him into compliance.

John sighed, “Okay, okay,” McKay had the look of a man two days in a bunker, half-crazed and desperate; one step away from running full on into raining fire. He moved back as John rolled from the bed, bare feet hitting the floor with a thud. Pausing, John ran a hand over his face, pushing the heels of his palms into his eyes till he saw white.

Rodney had shown up on his doorstep a week back, barreling inside with a ‘ _They’re imbeciles, I’m taking a vacation,_ ’ and leaving John to wander about the house in search of extra bedding he wasn’t sure he had. In the end he had to borrow from the neighbors, ignoring Rodney’s insistence that the sheets were disease ridden and most likely carried STDS. 

_The woman’s 65_ , he’d said, shoving the sheets into the washer.

_So they stink of death as well as prostitution!_

John had bleached them white and made a note to buy new linens for Mrs. McKinsey. 

“Well, would you like to sit here and die from smoke inhalation, or would you like to take a trip outside?” Rodney offered sardonically, arms folded across his chest. John gave him a weary look

\----

The grass was wet with early morning dew and stuck to the bottom of his feet in thick patches. It was mid-April, 55 degrees, and three in the morning. “I hate you.” John said, hands crossed and tucked beneath his arms.

“I swear it’s on fire!” 

The house was a wash of grays, brick barely illuminated by the lights on the street. John stared up at it forlornly, wishing he had shut the door on McKay and his many laptops like he initially intended. He was just about to tell Rodney so when the front window blew out with a hiss.

“HAH!” There were flames leeching up the wall, engraving dark patterns into the stone. “I KNEW IT!” Rodney was laughing, John’s house was on fire, and Rodney was laughing.

“My house is on fire,” he said, watching as Rodney lowered his arms in schooled victory.

“Yes, well. I told you it was. I am highly attuned to temperature shifts.”

The sound of a siren wailed in the distance and John debated how long it would take them to reach him if he killed Rodney right then. McKay was beginning to look deflated, pale even in the reflected light of the fire. 

“Look, it’s—I’m sure we can replace your things. The fire hasn’t even spread completely—“ 

The second story sparked, roof cracking as it dipped and fell inwards. 

“—urh, it’s not like you had that much to begin with. I mean, between the moves you didn’t have time to—“

“Stop talking, Rodney,” John sighed, feet frozen and cold.

“I—Yes, right.”

The fire engine slid to a stop behind them, John’s neighbors already gathering in hordes to watch his tiny rented house implode. “Sirs, I’m going to have to ask you to step back.” Rodney stumbled as the firemen pushed past him, two of them dragging an industrial sized hose. 

An ambulance was next to arrive, bright red lights threading through the crowd in waves. It’d been a while since John had seen a civilian EMT. They shoved him and Rodney in the back, running over a checklist of routine questions, and then abandoning them when it became apparent they were fine. 

“I’m sorry,” Rodney said, hands folded into his lap and eyes trained on the blaze.

John was quiet, “My 1984 Boston/Miami tape was in there.” 

The hoses were dosing flames at an amazing speed, but there was little left to save. Rodney turned to regard him, mouth worrying in slanted lines.

“I’ll buy you a new one.”


	2. On Warm Familiar Ground

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were originally posted on LiveJournal in 2007 under the name paw_tracks/paperbinned. I've gone back over them briefly to find and fix stray typos, but they're mostly unchanged.

John rents an old ’64 Chevy truck, cherry red and dull around the edges from too many days in the sun. He’s named her Lucille before he shows up outside Rodney’s front door, curling his fingers over her curves affectionately and counting all the nicks.

“You bought a beat up truck.” Rodney says from his position on the porch, barefoot and eating toast.

“She’s not beat up,” John says frowning, wrapping his fingers a little tighter around the door handle like Rodney might have hurt its feelings, “She’s got character.”

“ _She_ ,” Rodney doesn’t bother finishing, instead stuffing what’s left of his toast into his mouth and turning back to go inside, “just let me get my shoes.”

When he comes back out he’s got another piece of toast, this one coated in butter and cinnamon. He hands it to John as an afterthought, like it’s not his favorite, like he hadn’t had to comb through his cupboards to find the spice.

“Thanks,” John mumbles, toast already half gone.

Rodney nods, cheeks pinched red. “So, where are we going?”

John bites down to keep the toast in place, freeing his hands to put the car in reverse and pull out of the driveway. As soon as he’s got the truck in the right direction, he pulls the crumbling piece from his mouth. 

“Don’t know.”

Rodney snorts, but doesn’t complain. He settles down into the worn velour and looks out the window, sun peeking out around the mountains and pouring down its slopes like honey. 

John’s not entirely sure how his tires found Rodney’s street, but he feels no need to question it. Deep down he’d known that Rodney wouldn’t say no - that he’d get the gesture without having to ask why.


	3. The one with the booze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were originally posted on LiveJournal in 2007 under the name paw_tracks/paperbinned. I've gone back over them briefly to find and fix stray typos, but they're mostly unchanged.

There were people dancing, heat wafting off their bodies as they writhed, flexing into soft angles. 

It wasn’t often that they found a town like this. A quiet village tucked into the mountains where whatever sound bounced off the stone buildings was echoed back a little louder. John felt the tension in his shoulders ease, warmth coiling through his system until every notch in his spine sighed with the pressure. 

“This is—“ Rodney was heavy on his right, “This is, I don’t know what this is, but it tastes fantastic.” 

He had a cup cradled into his palms, yellow liquid frothing as it swayed. John couldn’t help but watch the color swirl, gold shifting against the light as Rodney sunk a little deeper into the space between them.

“’S mead.” John replied lazily, limbs an inch away from sprawling.

“Mead.” Rodney repeated, rolling the word around his tongue as if the simple sound of it tasted delicious. “We need— _this._ ” He waved a broad hand, fingers smacking into John’s chest even as the drink sloshed and tripped over his knuckles. 

“I don’t know if Elizabeth would sanction a trade for alcoholic beverages.” Elizabeth had standards, ones that involved tava beans and rifles. 

“What? She would. If she could taste it. We should—we should send her some.”

“Mail it?” John asked, watching amused as Rodney lurched into his side.

“Yeah, we’ll—what? No. We can’t mail it.” His face was pressed into John’s arm, breath ghosting over the exposed skin in hot gusts. “It wouldn’t work. There’s no—no mail in this galaxy. The cost of stamps would be atrocious. You’d need too many to cover the package—two hundred and seven.”

“That’s steep,” John rolled his shoulders, stretching slowly as Rodney continued his dissertation.

“There’s no union here, they can’t deliver post without a union to—to pay them and make sure they aren’t being abused by overwear—overbearing costumers.” Rodney’s words were sliding together, picking up speed as if they were rolling down hill. John chuckled, eyes half-lidded as he pictured Rodney atop a mountain in lederhosen shoveling off large effervescent letters at a furious pace.

“F, U, C—“ his veins felt thick beneath his skin, warm and throbbing as Rodney cut off circulation from his shoulder down. The drink was clouding his vision, his thoughts falling together in hap-hazard patterns when he tried to steady his progressive lean into the ground.

“These people are great.” Rodney declared, voice tinged with a seriousness that John normally attributed to foreign coffee and oatmeal pies. 

“Yeah,” John tried, moving his mouth into whatever shape he thought the word might form. Everything was tingling and he’d lost his ability to differentiate which body parts were required to get up and take a piss.

“Where’re Ronon and Teyla?” Rodney asked, blinking slowly into the distance where the locals continued to gyrate. It was a good question, one John was sure he could answer if he bothered to apply actual thought. He squinted, mouth turning downwards as he tried to concentrate.

“Ronon’s still in the tavern an’ Teyla went to bed.”

“Oh,” Rodney said, and John nodded even though he knew Rodney wasn’t looking. “My ass hurts.”

“You’re sitting on your gun.”

“Oh.” Rodney said again, not bothering to shift his hips.

“I think you’re sitting on my gun, too.”

“Do you need it?” Rodney’s eyes were wide, blue and glassy. John felt like rubbing his fingers over Rodney’s cheeks, wondering if they were actually as hot as they looked.

“No.” he said,

“Okay.” 

Rodney’s mouth was hanging open, bottom lip wet from where his tongue kept skating over it. John found himself fascinated; focusing what little brain activity he had into willing Rodney to lick it again. Come morning he would rationalize this experience through a massive hangover, but for now,

“You have something on your lip.”

A split second and Rodney’s tongue was out again—just there.

“Where?” he asked; speech inhibited by his search for misappropriated food. Rodney wasn’t big on wasting.

“It’s right—no, over. More, it’s—” John felt dizzy, tipping closer to Rodney’s face. 

Rodney was making frustrated sounds in the back of his throat, eyes crossed while he tried to pinpoint a figurative blotch. John felt like a fourteen year-old, wetting his own lips as he dipped closer.

“It’s—“ John’s voice was a low hush, his lips barely moving as he closed the space and covered Rodney’s mouth with his own. Rodney stilled, tongue caught somewhere between his teeth and John licked around it, increasing the press of his mouth. 

He pulled back before Rodney could respond. 

“Did you get it?”

“Yeah,” John said, “I think I got it.”


	4. Dinner Theater

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were originally posted on LiveJournal in 2007 under the name paw_tracks/paperbinned. I've gone back over them briefly to find and fix stray typos, but they're mostly unchanged.

“Oh my god, you’ve taken me to a brothel.” 

“It’s a club,” John says, watching in wry amusement as Rodney tries to climb into the wall without actually touching it. A half-naked man in a g-string drifts past wafting coconut oil, “a very, very gay club.”

“It’s—I—Do you know how many STDs we’re probably acquiring just by standing here?” Rodney hisses, fingers clenching and unclenching as he eyes the exit.

“You can’t get VD by breathing, McKay.” John says, lifting a brow as the half-naked man makes another appearance.

“Is this what you did before we met? You—you went to clubs and had sex with manly, glitter coated, strippers?”

“That guy is actually a lawyer.” John makes a point to wave politely. 

“YOU ARE SUCH A SLUT!”


	5. You can Cry if You Want To

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These were originally posted on LiveJournal in 2007 under the name paw_tracks/paperbinned. I've gone back over them briefly to find and fix stray typos, but they're mostly unchanged.

“If you continue humming that I swear I am going to grab the first sharp object I see and hurl it at your aorta.” 

John grins, “I am here to escort you to the mess.”

Rodney’s face twists into a grotesque position, forcing John to relive the horrifying experience of his 6th birthday when his grandfather had a stroke. “No,” Rodney says, “Please, god, no.”

“We should have been there fifteen minutes ago, but I stalled.” John says, like he’s gifting Rodney with a month supply of coffee coated breasts—which he’s not.

“You can’t make me do this,” Rodney pleads, “I refuse to go.”

“Oh yeah, this is yours,” John pulls a slightly crumpled piece of cardboard from his pocket. It’s striped blue, and coated in glitter, “you’re supposed to wear it.”

“I hate you.” Rodney states, “I’m killing you in your sleep.”

“Not the kazoo though,” John says, ignoring him, “it’s mine.”


End file.
